SS - Three badges down, three more to go

Because I am a lazy doofus, instead of enjoying the gorgeous weather and getting all kinds of exercise like I should have, I went on something of a Poke-binge.

Ended up taking the eastern seaside route from Lavender down to Fuschia.  The part just south of Lavender that's all wooden piers over water is now apparently called Silence Bridge -- people tiptoe so as not to scare the water Pokemon away.  ^_^  This was a decidedly long haul, especially as I took the opportunity to clear the route east of Vermilion that I couldn't get to because of the Snorlax. 

(It occurs to me that Vermilion the town is easily confused with Vermillion my Red Gyrados.  Heh.)

The southeastern-most part of Kanto, south of the fence maze, is now a pretty hill with wind turbines.  A surprise awaited me there:  Suicune, calling to me from out on the water.   It ran away as usual when Eusine showed up, but he said something about it liking windy hills near water -- "somewhere up north".   (Apparently that's not the Cape north of Cerulean, either, 'cause I've looked.)

Having made it to Fuschia and verified that the Pal Park was available, and seeing as it was Saturday, I hopped the border back to Jhoto and entered the Bug Catching Contest with Rotti again.  This time, Rotti was more than strong enough -- in fact, he KO'd pretty much everything with one hit.   It was still good training for him, though, and as a bonus I caught myself a female Combee:  trading gold.  This also got me second place, and another Everstone (though what I could really use is another Exp Share).

After that, I hopped back over to Kanto and opened up Cerulean.  Misty was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to tackle Cycling Road.  The bikers on it were astonishingly friendly after being defeated;  I got a bunch of phone numbers, and one of them called me up later to hand me a Dusk Stone, of all things.  Since I'd used the one I bought to evolve Rotti after he reached lvl 35, that was an unexpected but very welcome gift.

All that battling had finally gotten Rotti and Tremor up to decent levels, so I went for some badges.  Erica's Gym was pretty easy, between Rotti and Cynder.  In Janine's Gym -- she took over in Fuschia from daddy Koga after he joined the Elite Four -- I bungled a little and missed a trainer battle.  Instead of being subtly marked on the floor, the invisible walls were only obvious when you stumbled into them, and then a small section would become visible.  Worse, all the trainers were disguised as Janine.  And I found her before I found all of them.  So, missed one there.

Still, that got me two more badges, and with the Snorlax blocking Diglett's Cave, the only way to western Kanto was the long water route past the Seafoam Islands.  So I decided that I'd check out what was up at the Power Plant.  I'd been expecting a Rocket hideout, but all that was there were the workers who'd cleaned the place up and gotten the generator working.  A part had been stolen by some "shady character", was all.  Sure enough, the guy turned out to be a Rocket when I chased him down -- and with his badly mangled English, from some other country at that (Isshu, maybe? heh) -- but his single Golbat went down easily, and the Power Plant was running again in short order.

At some point, though, I'll have to go back that way and go through Rock Tunnel, which I totally skipped.  Vermillion's really the only one of the team that's strong enough against Rock types.

With that wrapped up, I was able to chase down Misty on her date at the Cape (was that really Red?  He didn't look at all familiar) and nab the Cascade Badge.  Sadly, though I was able to get the Expansion card for my Radio, neither Lavender Tower nor Silph Co. were accessible beyond their first floors.  The only thing left to do was to go play PokeFlute music on my Radio to wake up the Snorlax, which I caught easily enough.

All that being quite a Poke-marathon, I stopped outside the entrance to Diglett's Cave.  Next stop, Pewter City and the Boulder Badge! 

I have to say, I'm really impressed with the new rendering of Kanto in SS.  Besides the basic improvements to the graphics, the routes have more variation and, well, for lack of a better word, really great landscaping.  Instead of just being long stretches between cities, they feel like real countryside now -- but at the same time, they're similar enough to bring back that Red/Blue-era nostalgia.  It's very well done.  Props to Nintendo on that one.

You'd think I'd be Poke'd-out after all this, but I have the sudden urge to boot up Emerald and check where I was...